With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

okay, i think you handled the SV situation like Burna Boyz in an Explosives Factory.

and that floored me.

good show sir.

 

He is? I don't believe he mentioned anywhere in the two chapters what his plan was, or what lore, magic, or allies he had uncovered.

 

Ghazghkull got half his head blown off and started having visions as a result of his new half-robot brain.

 

Depends on what advantages being an out of universe soulless monster grants him. In DC he is unable to say his name ergo and its implied he isn't in the book of destiny. That could translate to him being invisible to the Chaos gods. In DC his lack of a soul means he has no inate resistance to magic IE he is no different to an object as far as magic is concerned...

In Warhammer not having a soul means you cannot be influenced by the Chaos God's as they can't interface with him properly, a negative soul would be more useful but beggars can't be choosers.

Now there is an argument about how far that would take him when he is using a ring that powers itself by eating warp energy, but that isn't exactly as terrible as it sounds since I believe (maybe erroneously) that some nekron tech does that.

In short he should be harder to corrupt than most.

 

Pretty sure that Starlight does have superpowers.

 

Oh, sorry. I thought you were talking about the childminder, not the woman dating Wee Hughie.

 

Well, that's certainly got her full attention now.

I wonder how all the other dignitaries he's met with reacted to such a EXTREMELY ambitious, and seemingly impossible goal...

 

Don’t we all.

Given he managed to get the Karaz Ankor and Ulthuan into an alliance I feel his list of titles should be significantly longer. By about a magnitude.

Odd. Ulthuan is not part of the Old World. And while its armies do operate in ‘that part’ of the world the same can be said of virtually everywhere.

 

The full list might be, but he generally feels that if the slaughter isn't strategically important then it's not worth mentioning.

Four out of five isn't bad.

 

So is Paul using a magical power source to sub for a Lantern in Warhammer Fantasy?

Beyond fighting and assimilation, what other big things has Paul done? I would imagine ring based healing or reconstruction on some nobles or movers and shakers would be something. Although Warhammer magical diseases would be an issue. Even identifying there is a problem medically so a noble could be seen by a magical healer would be valuable.

Ring scanning various parts of the empires and kingdoms for untapped or known resources or secret tunnels or caves orcs and goblins are using would be a boon.

Ring fabrication would be big in battle too. Armor gets damaged on one of Paul's allies Paul fabs a new set or shoulder piece that could be quickly enchanted to magically imbued to protect for the battle's course, that could save lives.

How does Paul get on with people like the Empire's Witch Hunters? Do they think a powerful weapon like the ring is in the hands of a weak link or something? Or given the stakes and the real dangers of Chaos and other enemies Paul sees the Hunters and brutal but necessary?

 

Mr Zoat How did he get the Dwarves to ally with the Elves and do anything even close to forgiving those Grudges? Did he find a way to convince the Phoenix King to apologize and balance all the books with the appropriate amount of blood money or whatever?

 

Technically, yes. He gets constant replenishment from the warp.

Movement. The ability to keep an eye on things and move troops around is invaluable.

Not his focus, but he can.

Enchantment can't be done fast.

He's basically had nothing to do with them.

He hasn't yet. They've just both been prepared to sponsor him.

Thorgrim has accepted in principle that he can pay off sections of the Great Book of Grudges, so his current plan is to destroy Naggarond from orbit while representatives from various clans watch. That pays off the initial attack which caused the War of the Beard, and will enable Finubar to regain the original Phoenix Crown if he pays recompense for the Shaving.

 

That’s effectively death of personality.

 

Maybe, maybe not. The Covenant the Nehekharans had with their gods was seriously bullshit. Not only did it extend their lifespan(an effect that continued on to a lesser degree even after Nagash broke the Covenant, even Nehekharan peasants and servants considered a hundred to be their fifty and nobles and royalty could live even longer though how much was the Covenant and how much was the medicines, potions and rituals of the Mortuary Cult are unknown) but it also had effects on physical abilities of Nehekharans(though it changed from city-state to city-state).

The Emperor's plan was never to destroy Chaos, the Emperor's plan was to cripple Chaos, and it wasn't by trying to starve them. You cant really destroy them, they are just giant masses of emotions and psychic energy, disperse them and they'll just recoalesce back together again. There's a reason the Old Ones and the Necrons could only enact a policy of containment.

As for how the Emperor could have crippled them, that was what the Imperial Truth was for.

Spoiler: Fabius Bile: Clonelord quote

‘They hate you, Fabius,’ Palos observed. ‘The daemons – I’ve never heard them make that sort of noise. Usually it’s all laughter and whispers.’

‘Why should they be any different to the rest of us?’ Savona said.

‘The Neverborn are stories made flesh,’ Saqqara said, holding up the flask. The formless thing within slammed minuscule fists against the walls of its prison. ‘Stories of murder and fear, despair and hope. Of excess and cruelty. They are warnings and retributions, hammered into shape by our belief. They are what we make of them.’ He looked at Fabius. ‘And he makes of them… nothing. He denies them, denies the story of them. It infuriates them, down to the very root of their conception.’

Fabius smiled. ‘As I will always deny them. I will not play the willing meat for such lazy parasites. If they want my belief, they must show me something more than they have already.’ The thing in the flask grew agitated, causing it to shudder in Saqqara’s grip. Fabius leaned close, smile widening. ‘But that would require some degree of true sentience, I fear. Something these thought-forms are singularly incapable of. They are nothing but cunning mirrors – hollow and empty. But they do make wonderful scouts.’

Entities of the Warp, whether daemons or "gods" are creatures of narrative. They quite literally are what people believe them to be, acting out the stories and fables that they can use to pretend at sentience and self determination.

The Imperial Creed can offer protection or even the true death of daemons because it has a narrative that daemons and dark gods can easily fit into, that of the "opposition". But at the same time it cant actually keep daemons and dark gods from messing with the galaxy because they fit into it's narrative.

The Imperial Truth denies them that narrative, denies them the stories and belief the neverborn need to shape themselves on all levels. Even the "dark gods" would get fucked over by a galaxy that has embraced the Imperial Truth because the only difference between a Chaos God and a lesser daemon is power and scale, not fundamental nature. A galaxy where the Imperial Truth has truly taken root is a galaxy where even the Chaos Gods would find themselves stripped of the narrative they need to pretend at being sapient.

Cutting humanity off from the warp by moving everyone into the webway and enforcing the Imperial Truth were both intended for severing the hooks the warp has on mankind, and thus allowing humanity to evolve in peace without Chaos fucking with us. Which is, you know, rather important when a "Humanities Fall" scenario could ex the galaxy entire*.

Unfortunately, this plan wouldn't work in Fantasy, not because warp entities aren't creatures of narrative, they fully are. The so-called "Gods of Order" are particularly blatant about it. Not only with the links between Morr and Usirian showing they are the same god despite how widely different their cults are, but even more locally like the differences between the Cult of Ulric and the Order of the Winter Throne. Despite both considering the other to be heretics, the warp entity that is Ulric/Winter King actively supports both because it ultimately is just a mask and a mirror for what those worshipping it believe.

But the reasons the plan wouldn't work is do to deeply entwined religion is with the people of Mallus and how there's no real way to escape the influence of the Warp, no webway to move people into. The barrier between realspace and the warp is so thin that even the "gods of order" can actively support those worshipping them with "Divine Magic" and Paul has pretty much no chance at all at getting everyone on the planet to start denying their gods and daemons. Hell the Elves already know about the narrative based nature of gods and daemons, Teclis even shared that knowledge with the Imperial Wizards when he founded the Colleges of Magic, it's one of the main reasons** the Colleges are officially secular even of some Orders maintain close ties with certain Cults(Light Order with Sigmar, Ameythist Order with Morr, Jade order with Taal and Rhya).


*Humanity in 40k is not only evolving into a psyker race, but one that actually eclipses the Eldar in power and is much more numerous and widespread. The reason the Emperor would allow no independent human enclaves in the galaxy was because he wanted to ensure that he could control and direct humanities coming evolution so that humanity wouldn't accidently destroy the galaxy

**Other reasons include the fact that Sigmar's Empire is historically(if very understandably considering how dangerous magic is in Warhammer Fantasy) very anti-magic, to the point where even 200+ years after the Colleges were founded, a large portion of the Empire's population still believes that all wizards are heretics who should be burned, so if Imperial Wizards tried to follow the Bretonnian and Nehekharan examples of becoming Wizard-Priests, they'd essentially be writing their own death warrants from the perceived blasphemy. There's also the fact that the founding figures of the Colleges such as Volans took the stance that it was better to put their trust in their own magical skills then to beg favors from warp entities, no matter said entities acceptance in the local culture.

Spoiler: Volan's speech

Thanks to the foresight of our great emancipator, Emperor Magnus, that freed us to study the arts of spellcasting.
Thanks, too, to the wondrous teachings of our founders, the great Loremasters Teclis, Finreir, and Yrtle, we of
the College of Light know that Aethyric energy, or magic, is the fundamental substance of all Gods, acceptable and
unacceptable, and that magic in itself is neither good nor evil. It simply is. It can be harnessed for good or for ill, but
unharnessed magic is simply the blind energy of transmutation.

So the connection between magic, the Gods, their religions and their clerics, is entirely fundamental. Indeed, though
many outside the hallowed walls of this great College, including many of our allies within the Cult of Sigmar, would
denounce my words as heresy, magic was used by the clerics of the Empire, even while those same clerics condemned the
hedge wizards of bygone years for practising petty witchery. After all, what are the miracles regularly performed by
our Empire’s priests and clerics if not a form of spell? And how do those prayers manifest as miracles except through
the energies of magic?

Since the founding of the Colleges of Magic, we Magisters have been able to counter and dispel many of the
harmful “miracles” performed against us. I believe that we could not dispel these “miracles” if they were not magical
invocations of some sort.

For centuries, the clerics and priests of this Empire had the monopoly on the use of magic, using it uniquely for the
intentions of their Gods and cults—whether that was to heal the sick and bring a bountiful harvest or to keep their
congregations obedient. Since the end of the Great War, we Magisters have changed the politics (and perhaps theology),
around this old balance of power because we do not need the intervention of Gods or Daemons to work our “miracles.”
We manipulate magic as a potter manipulates clay—with practiced skill and concentration, not through prayer and
faith.

So, just to make clear, although the blessings and miracles of the Empire’s clerics are a different kind of magic
manipulation from the spellcraft of Magisters such as ourselves, it is a spellcraft none the less. I believe that the
difference between the two is one of choice and personal control. A cleric’s prayer calls upon theosophic or divine magic,
while our own spells weave strands of raw, or arcane, magic in the form of the Eight coloured Winds.
We Magisters are taught to see, harness, and manipulate the separate Winds of Magic into specific spells. We are
responsible for the entire process. If anything goes wrong, it is because of our own inexperience or lack of control.
When a priest prays to his or her deity for divine aid, the “miracle” performed through the priest is due to the direct
intervention of the invoked deity or one of its servants. Since miracles and spells are both manipulations of magic, the
effects of Arcane and Divine magic are pretty much the same. The difference is that a Magister manipulates the magic
himself, while a priest asks his or her deity to manipulate magic into a specific “miracle.” Few, if any of these priests
understand this process much beyond the fact that they have prayed to their God and their God has answered.
The priests and clerics who can utilise divine magic do not need to know any spellcraft or arcane art. For that reason
alone, the connection between clerical miracles and Wizardly spellcraft has never been made openly. The clerics simply
prayed to their Gods with humility and great faith, and, if feeling inclined to do so, these Gods provided the miracles
that were asked of them. As long as the clerics and the other devotees of any particular God continued to show suitable
respect and obeisance to their deity, prayers could be answered and miracles would be wrought just as they are today.
Of course, because these miracles are performed through the priest or cleric by a deity, there need not be any risk to the
priest himself unless the deity in question is particularly ruthless. The miracle is either performed or it is not, as the case
may be. Users of arcane magic, on the other hand, will always bear the brunt of any failures they make while utilising
their spellcraft, because spellcasters are the ones who are holding and controlling the magics being used, not some allpowerful
Aethyric entity.

All those who would use magic of a non-divine origin must be practiced and knowledgeable Magisters if they are to
wield magic safely and produce any miraculous effect. While we Magisters use those elements of the Aethrian that come
to us through the Chaos Gates in the form of the Winds of Magic, priests and clerics actually reach into the Aethrian
to summon their magics, or miracles. So what is it that allows not magically inclined people, as indeed the majority
of the Empire’s clerics are, to communicate with the entities of the Aethrian, and more, bid those entities to perform
miracles on their behalf? How is it that a devout priest with no magical training can perform feats that a Magister
could perform only after months, or even years, of faithful study and practice? Therein lies one of the great secrets
of our world—a secret that reveals something fundamental about the nature of magic, the Gods, and the connections
between mortals and the Aethrian.

Ask yourselves, how do spellcasters actually bind and control magic? We possess the ability to perceive and touch the

Winds of Magic in some way. That we possess this ability does not necessarily imply that we know how to use it, any
more than any ordinary Human born with two eyes and two hands can read or write without first being taught.
Magisters control magic through the use of techniques and formulae that have been discovered through logical
deduction and controlled trial and error across the centuries. On the other hand, priests and clerics are able to perform
miracles solely by merit of the strength of their beliefs and faith.

I am sure it has not escaped any of your notice that the more genuinely pious and faithful the cleric, the more successful
his or her prayers for divine miracles and blessings seem to be. Have not the Theogonist of Sigmar and even Emperor
Magnus himself been known to perform the most startling of feats? I, the elected Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of
Magic, trained by mighty Teclis himself, must stretch myself to replicate any of them, from Magnus’s ability to banish
the greatest of Daemons, to his recorded ability to dispel sorceries of some of Tzeen’eth’s most powerful sorcerers—all
because of his genuine and absolute faith in the might of Sigmar Heldenhammer.

Why is it the instinctive beliefs and emotions of clerics are just as successful in controlling magic as the considered,
practiced and logically deduced enchantments of the diverse Magisters? Because, my brothers and sisters, although the
Aethrian itself has existed since the beginning of time, all momentum, identity, and personality within the Aethrian
has been formed by the thoughts and feelings of mortals. That is, the Gods themselves are the creations of mortal
experience. Although we mortals are at the mercy of Gods and Daemons, they are still our creations and not the other
way around.

If all Gods and Daemons are manifestations of the mortal world’s thoughts, dreams, and feelings, then could this
not explain why they react so readily to the faith of those who worship them? Could it be that some or all of the Gods
actually need the faith of mortals to maintain their unique identities? They could be drawn to particularly strong
demonstrations of faith, both to feed off of it and to encourage even greater levels of faith in the believer.
This could perhaps explain why the servants of Chaos are often so much stronger in their spellcraft and wield more
powerful magics than we Magisters of the Empire. These Sorcerers can both manipulate the Winds of Magic as we
Magisters do and also have an immense faith in, and a direct link to, their Daemonic Gods. Indeed, this could help
explain the frightening power of those sorcerers who are dedicated to the Daemon God Tzeentch, for their God is the
first and greatest God of the study of magic. In addition to their almost priestly powers of supplication, the Change
Lord’s Sorcerers also posses a divinely inspired knowledge of spellcraft that often far outstrips that of all other
spellcasters.

Even though this might be true, I do not believe that we, the Magisters of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, should
follow their example and choose for ourselves Gods to wholly dedicate ourselves to and beg favours from, to use in
conjunction with our own arcane spellcraft. Nothing in this life or the next is free, and whilst I am willing to trust
in my own abilities and limitations, and accept any errors I make while weaving my spells, I do not wish to trust the
continued benevolence of a deity whose need for my faith and dedication might far outweigh my own need for His or
Her aid.


—from Magister Volans’ third letter to the Colleges of Magic .
Extracted from the Liber Chaotic a, Compiled by Richter Kless

Teclis spilled the beans on the nature of gods, daemons, arcane and divine magic and while the priests and clerics wanted nothing to do with what Teclis was saying, the wizards listened and came to the conclusion that while they respected the gods as powerful entities they would not pray and beg for "miracles" from fickle warp beings but instead place their faith in their own abilities and skill at manipulating the Winds of Magic, even if doing so makes them more "limited" in some ways then a Chaos Sorcerer, Bretonnian Damsel/Prophetess and Nehekharan Liche Priest.

Wizards respect the gods both on a personal level and on an organizational one(the particular gods and particular colleges depending on the cult and college respectively), the Amethyst College even has Shrines of Morr inside it, but they don't worship the gods on anything more then a personal level(Priests of Morr that find themselves channeling the Amethyst Wind are known to quit their position in the Cult of Morr before joining the Amethyst College).

 

Priests using magic in Warhammer is after my time.

 

Basically "Divine Magic" works by a priest begging or praying to their god for a "miracle" and said god shaping magical energy into said "miracle" before using said priest as channel for their "miracle" to effect the physical world. Where as "Arcane Magic" is a wizard crafting spells by manipulating the Winds of Magic directly, no divine aid but it also means they don't have to worry about gods not helping.

The most powerful human spellcasters are Wizard-Priests, those who practice both Arcane Magic and Divine Magic, aka Chaos Sorcerers, Bretonnian Damsels/Prophetess, and Nehekharan Liche-Priests(well technically all Nehekharan magic is Divine Magic but they've refined it so much that they can make use of the Lore of Life and the Lore of Death as well as the Lore of Nehekhara).

That said, you'll never see a priest of the Old World calling their miracles "Divine Magic" as even Teclis knew to stop pushing things after the priests started glaring murder and mumbling about heresy.

 

Don't forget that Luna itself was basically turned into a giant weapons platform.

A single light speed lance battery shot would punch through an unconscious newbie lanterns environmental shield like it wasn't even there.

His Ring would be unable to access any Human computer systems because every single one is warded to high heavens.

Only way to keep that Chaos scrapcode out.

 

I though it was established that only lasers of the same colour as the ring could bypass environmental shields?

Cite please? Cause I can't think of anything like this. If your talking about the benidictions of a tech-priest, then first, not all technology gets those and second, we have no evidence that they function like DC magic and ward against ring scans.

 

Praise be Signor... Sigis... Sigmar !

 

No, I didn't mean as in 'I don't know about it', I meant as in 'don't expect me to use it'.

 

A Lance Battery shot wouldn't need to bypass the environmental shield... It would punch through it like it wasn't even there...

No, I am talking about the actual wardings they slap onto everything under the guise of Gothic architecture.

 

And it wouldn’t be able to hit him unless he tried to fly down the barrel of the gun while it was preparing to fire.

I don’t think that those are actual magic wards. I think they’re just encryption scheme and computer security that the Ring would be able to break. Remember, tech that manipulates Warp energy is generally tech heresy.

 

... I don't agree but I think we should just agree to disagree on that one.

1. The Gothic architecture has nothing to to do with any kind of "warding". That is just their asthetic and architectural style.
2. The Cult Mechanicus doesn't use said gothic architecture anyway since they have their own asthetic, closer to Verne and HG Wells then neogothic cathedrals.
3. You didn't address my point about how we have no indecation that WH40K psykic powers or expressions of faith block ring scans. Indeed the 40k universe does not seem to have anything like DC magic at all.

Seriously where are you getting this idea from. I know its not from the SB or SV threads.

 

How long ago did you stop paying attention to Warhammer Fantasy? Because the division between Arcane Magic and Divine Magic has been a thing since at least 2004-2005 when they put out the second edition of the rpg, or even as early as 2000 if you count Sixth Edition's introduction of warrior priests.

 

In my day, monstrous creatures were made of cardboard! Like Nuffle intended!

4th Edition.

 

Dude, that came out in 1992. That was well before the introduction of the type of miracle blessing warrior-priests that would become one of the Empire of Man's biggest signatures.




The entire setting changed massively with sixth edition, from lore to how magic works, and the changes sixth edition brought only got more refined since then. If you are basing your Warhammer Fantasy segments on Fourth Edition, then no offense but I might just skip them because trying to make sense of things would probably be headache inducing to say the least like when I looked up the old Dark Omen game and found out that one character was a male Ice Witch(for instance, not sure if you heard but nowadays only women are allowed to learn Ice Magic in Kislev since a prophecy(which may or may not be real) says that a male Ice Witch would end up destroying the nation. Males with the ability to use magic are either sent south to learn at the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf, are executed or pacified).

 

Chaos sorcery is basically magic. The fundamental difference between psychic powers and sorcery in 40k is whether or not you’re born with the power to wield them; it’s basically like the difference between sorcerers and wizards in DnD.

 

There's a grand total of one segment to go. Why the heck do you think the niceties of metamagic are going to be a core part of it?

In my day there were three warrior priests. One was the Grand Theologist, and the other two were mercenaries. None had magical blessings. All had big hammers.

 

He's basically like a Necron. Which would freak the hell out of anyone with Witchsight, as would his ring. That is if Witchsight is even going to be a thing in these segments(fourth edition tabletop, I have no idea how idea how this world works right now).

 

I can see why paol could be successful in a way that a native handed a power ring couldn't be.

A native mainlining avarice probally would be corrupted, and paol's soulless state may have presented difficulties to any chaos future sight plots killing him before he could learn to defend himself.